Kate was shaking her head. “Ma thinks you’re the golden boy, Matt. She trusts you.”
“I’m thinking of Ma. I’m thinking about what’s best for all of us. You want Jacko to run this thing? With half a jug of grog in him? Bloody Jacko?”
“They came over here. They killed Ellen. They’ll get what’s coming to them!” Kate insisted.
“This is going to end up with more people dying. Ivan told me what happened to that girl Jacko picked up in the early 2000s. Jesus! It doesn’t have to be that way. We can talk to Ma, you and me! Our whole future is at stake here. Look, when the trust’s done and the money’s gone, what will we have to fall back on? Nothing. The eco-lodge, tourism—that kind of thing could save us.”
“I don’t like this sort of talk, Matt. We’re family—we’re united,” Kate said.
“Of course we are. But we have to do what’s best for the family in the long run. Not just tonight.”
Kate considered it and then shook her head and slowly raised her shotgun. It came to rest pointing at Matt’s chest. “You have to make a decision, Matty,” she said. “Are you from over there or are you from here? Are you one of them or one of us? Which is it?”
“You wouldn’t,” Matt said, staring at the gleaming double barrels of her shotgun. A gun that had killed hundreds of rabbits, cats, foxes, and God knew what else.
“Them or us, Matthew?”
Matt took off his hat and shook his head. The hatband was drenched with sweat. He mopped his brow and nodded. “Ma took me in. Treated me like a son. It’s always going to be family first.”
Kate lowered the gun. “That’s what I had to hear, Matt. Jacko and Ivan never need to know we had this conversation. But I’ll be watching you. Just remember where your loyalties lie.”
9
The kids were crying. Heather was trying to breathe. Dozens of flies were circling in slow spirals about him. Tom’s head was throbbing. They’d done this all wrong. If they’d come clean in the first place, perhaps the O’Neills wouldn’t have reacted with such hostility. He should have followed his first instincts: Confessed all. Gotten the police involved. Why had he listened to Heather? She was a Millennial. She didn’t know anything.
He shook his head.
It was too late for recriminations.
This didn’t necessarily have to be a fatal mistake. This wasn’t some hick county in America. This wasn’t the third world. This was Australia, one of the most civilized countries on Earth. They would threaten them and try to bully them, but an arrangement would be made. This very situation had happened to Thomas Edison in Germany. Edison had run over a peasant woman in his car and he had simply opened his wallet and paid off the entire— “What’s going to happen to us?” Olivia asked softly.
“Nothing’s going to happen, sweetie. They’re just trying to intimidate us. That’s what bullies do,” Tom said.
“You killed the woman,” Owen said.
“It was an accident, Owen. I didn’t kill her. She swerved onto the road with her bike. It was an accident. It’s the sort of tragic thing that happens all the time.”
“That’s a lie. You are both liars. That’s not what happened,” Owen said, leaning forward but stopping abruptly as the ropes choked him.
Tom looked at Heather for support but she was writhing around in her jeans trying to get comfortable or doing God knew what.
“This is your fault, Heather,” Olivia cried. “We should have called the police. You don’t run away when you have an accident! Didn’t you ever learn that where you came from?”
“There was no phone signal,” Heather said.
“Now they’re going to take revenge on us,” Olivia said.
“That’s not how things work. Not in Australia. Not anywhere. They’re angry now but they’ll see reason. This is a police matter. Sooner or later they’ll call the police,” Tom insisted.
“They said there aren’t any phones here either,” Owen said.
“They’ll take the ferry over to the mainland and call from there.” Tom could see Heather still wriggling in the dirt. “What are you doing over there?” he asked.
Heather was drenched with sweat. She looked up at him. “I shoved my key chain down the front of my jeans. I think I can get it out.”
“What good will that do?”
“There’s a penknife on it,” Heather whispered. “I picked it up in Alice Springs. I thought they’d make us turn out our pockets, so I hid it.”